2017 Winners

Senior Thesis Division

Collin Gill

In this thesis I interrogate the “It Gets Better” (IGB) video project by Dan Savage, using an intersectional analysis to reveal the ways in which it reinforces politics of respectability, neoliberalism, and lacks an intersectional approach to the process of coming out across lines of gender identity, race/ethnicity, class, nationality, religion, and ability. I chose to research this topic because as a genderqueer and queer person there have been instances that my life has not gotten better since coming out. By the same token, I have several friends who have had particularly difficult experiences because of coming out due to their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), contending with gender dysphoria, nationality, religion, and inaccessibility to resources (e.g.- healthcare, education, housing) within the capitalist structures of the United States (U.S.). My goal in this thesis is to interrupt neoliberal notions of “getting better” and instead turn our attention to the structures in society that do not allow life to get better for all LGBTQ people after coming out.

Anna Mikkelborg

Faculty Advisor: Michael McCann

Reframing Reform: Evaluating and Challenging Conversations Around Campaign Finance in the United States (paper not available)

For over a century, the Supreme Court has persisted in framing campaign finance regulation as a question of balancing First Amendment free speech rights and the need to prevent corruption, a paradigm which elides an equally important concern for equitable political representation across socioeconomic status. I argue that reframing campaign finance as an issue of Fourteenth Amendment equal protection is a politically compelling and legally defensible strategy that will promote campaign finance regulations that more holistically reflect and balance constitutional values. In addition to building theoretical support for this framework, this paper presents original empirical findings that greater regulation of campaign finance in the states is associated with more progressive income tax schemes. These findings provide additional support for framing conversations around campaign finance in terms of policy alignment and, by extension, the constitutional interest of equal protection of the law.

Hannah Fumiko Russ

Multiracial Japanese families posed a problem for the U.S. government during the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. The Mixed Marriage policy was an attempt to reconcile the question: Who did the U.S. government and the Japanese American community consider Japanese? Japanese Americans emigrated with the transpacific identity of both Japanese and American. In contrast, the U.S. government rejected the possibility of dual identities by arguing that racial identity was based on biology alone. The existence of mixed race individuals in Japanese mass incarceration camps upset the U.S.’s racial logic that emphasized segregator biology over the possibility of cultural assimilation. The Mixed Marriage policy built upon segregation policies to determine who could integrate into the American identity. Those who passed the appeal process of the Mixed Marriage policy were welcomed back into the categories of Japanese and American. These individuals became symbols for the U.S. government to project an image of benevolence and racial tolerance in the post-war empire.

Senior Non-Thesis Division

Jocelyn Beausire

The built environment frequently under-emphasizes the role of auditory perceptions in shaping experience. In an urban planning context, this disregard can impact the whole of society. Raymond Murray Schafer proposed psychoacoustic ecology as a framework for shaping the large-scale urban acoustic environment. He defined it as the "study of the relationship between humans and sounds in a given environment," and stated that the holistic acoustic environment, or “soundscape,” is a “musical composition to which we necessarily contribute and must take responsibility.” My research applies this comparison to critique the idea of absolute silence and its repercussions on urban populations. I apply the theories of mid-century music composer John Cage as an extension of Schafer’s similitude, and through combining it with the theories of several prominent figures in the urban planning community, I propose a framework for creating urban acoustic ecologies that encourage egalitarian, cooperative, and inclusive urban spaces.

Laura Christman

This collection of four papers was written for a History 498 Senior Seminar. This particular class was unusual because instead of writing one long paper we wrote four shorter papers. The subject of the class was Science and Popular Culture in the Victorian Period. Each of these papers focuses on a different aspect of Victorian scientific views through one specific example. The research topics had to connect to the theme of that weeks reading, and needed to be based primarily on primary sources. I wrote about animal rights through examining cookbooks, cleanliness and hygiene through cosmetics, women’s reproductive health through bicycles, and psychical research through a skeptical member of the leading paranormal society of the Victorian era. Each of these papers focuses on a different aspect of Victorian science, but they should be understood as one project representative of a quarter long process of developing research and writing skills.

Hohjin Im

Growth mindset literature suggests that an emphasis the ability to improve yields positive learning outcomes for many American institutions, where a fixed mindset philosophy is common. Growth mindset interventions, however, have not been widely conducted on populations from East Asian cultures. Results and findings from both cultural and developmental scholarships suggest that there may be similarities between the growth mindset and East Asian cultural values, but individuals from East Asian cultures may still be underperforming due to exposure from American institutional fixed mindedness. This literature review proposes that 1) the phenomenon of high-achievement observed in East Asian populations is a manifestation of inherent key growth mindset concepts in their cultural way of being, and that 2) the implementation of growth mindset interventions can serve as a tool for addressing institutional mismatches in cultural expressions of feedback and growth, while narrowing achievement gaps.

Ethan Walkley

My research focused on literary censorship during the Second Empire France by examining two censorship trials: the 1856 trial of Gustave Flaubert’s realist novel Madame Bovary and the 1857 trial of Charles Baudelaire's anthology of poems, Les Fleurs du Mal. Both works were tried by the same prosecutor and both dealt with similar themes including that of adultery and outrage of good morals. Why then was Flaubert found innocent while Baudelaire was found guilty despite a weaker and lackluster indictment by the prosecutor? The objective of my research was to carefully examine each trial with its involved literary works in order to discover the reasons for these unusual outcomes.

Non-senior Division

Malak Shalabi

Using an Islamic lens, this paper will explore spiritual humiliation, a method of torture used by guards in Syria’s government torture facilities to violate religious boundaries and demean the spiritual identity of detainees. Spiritual humiliation will be categorized into two forms; the first being forced sin. This is committed in verbal and physical blasphemy and false confessions. The second form of spiritual humiliation is the restriction of religious practice, apparent both directly, by forbidding prayer, fasting, the call to prayer, growing of a beard, and indirectly, by preventing them from seeing the time of day, necessary for fasting and praying, and by imposing a state of religious impurity upon the detainee. Labeling the sectarian abuse that takes place on a smaller scale in torture facilities provides a deeper understanding the religious dimension to the genocide in Syria.

Honorable Mention: Senior Thesis Division

Ian Bellows

Himalayan adventure travel is a burgeoning industry in some mountainous regions of Nepal, but with its rapid, uneven, and largely unregulated growth have come the creation of new economic and social arrangements and renewed questions of equity and safety. On April 18, 2014, a serac collapsed on Mt. Everest’s Khumbu Icefall and killed 16 Nepali high altitude workers. After several contentious days of deliberation and protests at Base Camp, the climbing season effectively ended when rumors began to circulate that attempts to continue climbing would be met with violence by individuals purportedly associated with Nepal’s Maoists. I combine the theoretical framework of Scott’s transcript theory with the interpretive frame of Birrell’s treatment of Everest as a text to be read and analyzed to show how rumors of Maoist involvement, though unsubstantiated, encapsulated specific anxieties and dominant preconceived notions about the structure and function of the Himalayan adventure travel industry.

Martin Horst

Today, the continuing presence of French as the language of higher education and economic opportunity in Morocco illustrates the widespread influence that France still exercises over her former protectorate. French has also been shown to play a crucial role in extra-professional sites. This complexity of linguistic usage predicts a multifaceted understanding of French by its users in Morocco; how then can we characterize younger speakers’ attitudes towards the French language, and their own sense of self? Through sociolinguistic, qualitative analysis of conversational data collected in the spring of 2015, I show how the personal identities of Moroccan students intersect with their command of and nostalgia for French, yielding positive and negative alignments with the language. By examining the different values assigned overtly to French by its speakers, we can expand our understanding of how this interaction may influence linguistic and social hierarchies in this region.

Andres Quiroga Roldan

Despite having nearly identical historical, ethnic, and social backgrounds, Sweden and Denmark have taken fairly different approaches to the issue of immigration over the last half-century. While Denmark surrendered to some extent its reputation as a humanitarian superpower by advocating for aggressive anti-immigration and anti-refugee policies, Sweden took in perhaps more refugees than they were able to accommodate. Both cases ultimately led to a severe marginalization of immigrant communities – especially of immigrants of Middle Eastern background. This marginalization, in turn, has led to some disturbances and even terror attacks in Copenhagen and Stockholm, and has been fueling anti-immigration sentiments amongst Scandinavian voters at an increasing pace. While Sweden remains politically moderate relative to the rest of Europe, Denmark has seen an incredible surge of its far-right, populist Folkeparti in its last few elections.

Honorable Mention: Senior Non-Thesis Division

Anna Bridston

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has an end goal of complete disarmament. Despite the creation of successful programs - such as Megatons to Megawatts between the United States and Russia - which have aimed at the gradual reduction of surplus nuclear stockpiles, the prospect of the total elimination of nuclear weapons now seems fleeting as it is no longer a bilateral issue between two hegemonic powers, but one that is widespread among states with varying interests. This paper examines why we are struggling to successfully fulfill the NPT by stressing the issues of deterrence, modernization, and noncompliance in our current political climate, which has seen increases in proliferation as opposed to gradual disarmament. I also address potential solutions, such as the creation of an international fuel bank, the use of irreversible safeguards agreements, and a program dedicated to the global recycling nuclear fuel for clean energy rather than using it for further proliferation.

Rian Chandra

An Ion Doppler Spectrometer diagnostic system has been constructed to measure impurity ion temperature and velocity on the HIT-SI and HIT-SI3 spheromak devices with improved spatiotemporal resolution and lower error. Hardware and software improvements have resulted in a record 6.9 µs temporal and ≤ 2.8 cm spatial resolution in the midplane of the devices. With these, C III and O II flow, displacement, and temperature profiles can be simultaneously observed. In other words, we describe analysis and hardware improvements made to a spectrometer which significantly expand the measurement possibilities, for plasma physics applications. This paper has been submitted to the journal, Review of Scientific Instruments.

Maddie Spencer

This research paper attempts to make sense of the current political situation in France by analyzing France’s interactions with the European Union, French citizens’ opinions of those interactions, and potential consequences of those opinions. The paper begins with a historical rundown of France’s role in the European Union and then uses that to explain the French political scene today.

Honorable Mention: Non-senior Division

Ruby Davis

This essay explores visual depictions of paederastic male couples in ancient Greek art and shōnen’ai couples in modern Japanese manga and anime. While both shōnen’ai and paederastia literally translate to “boy love” and share many similarities, the way that androphilic men are characterized in visual depictions differs greatly and can reveal nuances of gender and same-gender attraction in modern and ancient culture. For example, same-sex couples in Greek art enjoyed a more equal balance of power and more physical autonomy in their relationships than shōnen’ai couples. In ancient Greece, paederastic relationships were considered “part of the ideal life for elite men”, and depictions were typically created by men, for men. However, shōnen’ai is typically created by women, for women, and does not attempt to bolster the standing of androphilic males in society—rather, it continues to perpetuate harmful stereotypes to increase erotic thrill through the supposed transgression of same-sex relationships.

Ian Tracy Gwin

Discourse configurational languages show a bewildering variety of word orders dictated less by word class or case than by the pragmatic roles of information in the sentence. Within the field of generative syntax Kiss (1995) models this order through the use of a focus phrase (FP) which takes as its specifier a focused constituent that undergoes movement from its base generated position. Ehala (2006) argues that the underlying word order of Modern Standard Estonian -- a discourse configurational language -- is SIOV, but does not present evidence for a complete picture of the necessary movement within a generative theory. Considering further data presented by Mati (1993) I argue that languages such as Estonian use the FP, generated under the CP, to code wide focus through transformational movement. Other phenomena such as a prevalent V2 ordering and sentence final narrow focus can be described using the FP.

Katherine Jacobsen

Female genital cutting (FGC) is a hot topic in anthropological and public health. My paper strives to identify the culture around FGC in Sudan. I looked at the pros and cons of medicalization of FGC, and how different organizations such as the WHO and UNICEF are currently dealing with and trying to stop this from occurring. Since this topic is so intertwined with culture and tradition, it was very difficult to write about. I see this as a female and human rights issue, and wanted to look at it from that standpoint while still respecting the values of this culture. I want to know how to uphold their traditions while still keeping women and girls safe.

Heather Lopes

Marine diseases are a major cost to fisheries and aquaculture industries, and as we continuously rely on marine organisms for protein, we increase our interaction with illnesses like gastroenteritis from undercooked oysters. An additional danger to aquaculture industries are the infestation of invasive ascidian species that can compete for space and food thus creating smaller harvest yields. For this proposal, the goal is to take two existing problems in aquaculture and discover if invasive can filter feedings ascidians can alter the transmission of Vibrios bacteria in the water column. If the benefits of using ascidians as biofilters outweighs the risks, then the management of marine diseases can be viewed from a new perspective.